Thursday, September 26, 2013
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Osprey with the Kill
This is my first attempt in sketching a bird. Being a photographer I know how hard it is to shoot a bird in action. In the last year and a half I have been venturing most of my leisure time in bird photography and have learnt quite few about birds and shooting them. Here are a few of them, all though until now I could never take a photo which I have hoped for.
The sketch that I have made here is of a photograph which is still in my dreams. The original photograph which won the Wildlife Photographer of the Year award was shot by the British Photographer Paul Hobson. My salute to Paul Hobson for such a fantastic image. I have tried to bring in some justice to this photograph and have tried my level best to capture the mood in entirety. It is a plain pencil sketch on a 230 gsm paper. To get the splash effect I have used a bit of spray painting.
Please drop a one or two comments of yours. Thanks.
Thursday, January 01, 2009
Nikki
It has been a quite a while since my last post. Here is a brand new sketch of mine.#
Her name is Nikki and she is a super sweety. Hopefully she will accept that it is herself. :)
Please leave your comments/feedback.
Wish you all a very prosperous new year!
Sunday, March 02, 2008
The Wedding
Here is a sketch of mine that I drew somewhere in the middle of last year. After Hansika, this again was drawn on a A1 size sheet and it was pretty difficult to maintain the isometric proportions in the picture. I loved the mood in the original picture and bride's neatly combed hair with lillies on her head, her gentle smile and the angle of light falling on the grooms head making it shiny. The couple in foreground with the backdrop of flowers behind (which I have made blurred) to increase the depth of field of the object in focus was an another challenging task to make.
Please leave me your feedback below. Thanks.
Saturday, July 28, 2007
L'innocence
It took more than a month for me to draw this sketch.
Guess what, when I assumed I had completed the sketch the first time, I had missed the girl's right eye which is hiding under her ruffled hairs. All thanks to my friend, for identifing this at the first place and for a few of her valuable suggestions.
The soft caress innocent smile of the girl appealed me very much when my cousin sister recommended me to try and draw her. Everything about this picture, her smile, her hands, her hairs, her sweater, her skirt, the aluminium vessel with stains of carbon, the angle of the wooden lid, the position of the kettle was picture perfect!. After one and half month of lead going inside the sheet, here she is.
Monday, March 19, 2007
Nagaraholey
Yesterday, I had been to Nagaraholey for doing some real wild life photography. A single day was not long enough and I could not spot anything apart from deers and elephants. I happen to take a few pictures of some amazing flowers though, which can be found at this link.
Click here to see the picturesque of Nagaraholey and Irpu Falls.
Sunday, February 18, 2007
The Road to El Dorado
"Abey dude bhees pandra dollars dekey bhachagaya, toh samjho woh miracle hai" a friend of mine said. He was commenting on the probable situation with the Indian Customs looking at the volume of my travel bags. My hand bag itself was weighing some 37 lbs, which excluded my laptop. All those small but heavy weights were inside my hand baggage (It was that 21" upright). The check-in bags put together was touching 100 lb mark.
"Dude tu ham sabko chodke jaa rahe ho" an another friend said.
It was those final moments on the day of my travel back to my home. I finally gave one hard long look at the house. Two of my friends together had to escort the toughest 65+ lb duffel to the car. I helped myself with the rest. Soon we were heading on the I-494 west towards the Lindberg terminal of the St.Paul/Minneapolis Airport. For the past year and a half I had been on this highway on innumerable occasions. It was the oesophagus for us to the outside world.
I had perfectly worked on the weight and balance of my cargo for the past two days. The duffel was showing 69.5 lbs while the other 29" upright showed 51 lbs. The check-in lady said,
"Alrighty, 51 lbs is okey, you got to pay a 25$ fee for the excess baggage for the other".
"That's fine".
It was delightful to see of my first hurdle getting cleared so easily. The bags were through checked in until Bangalore and there I was holding 4 boarding passes.
Afterwards, it was the Starbucks time. I had a lot of time until my first boarding and we (Deepak and Pradeep as well) thought of having something at the Starbucks. I had my final slurp of the Starbucks Cappuciono as I bid my final good bye to them and entered that security check. The officer at the entry of the security check point said,
"Sir, I'm gonna hold your boarding pass for now, you have been selected for a special security check. Go ahead and get it done and come back for your boarding pass!!!!".
He told that the higher level of security check was because my boarding pass to Atlanta had the special characters "SSS3" on the right most corner.
"What the hell!!!?"
Trust me, this is a sick check. I was double cross checked for any armed weapon despite the x-ray machine made no sound!. Every single item was opened from my hand bag and was certified!. I guess I gave that lady a tough job!. Remember, I had almost 20 kgs of gadgets in my hand bag!. Anyways, that manual check was very annoying. The aunty searched my bag thread by thread as though she was sure about the traces of opium or marijuana. She tried her lever best though. The closest one she could find was my sten gun like Canon 100-400mm IS USM lens :)
I was finally allowed to proceed.
I reached the Gate to find out the boarding was 40 minutes afterwards. I plugged in my iPod on to my ears. The boarding was on time. The journey was little haunting. As I flew past from Minneapolis to Atlanta, the memoirs of my good, bad and boring times of my stay at Eagan also flew past my mind.
The flight reached Atlanta in time but by that time I was very hungry. I grabbed some ghaas pooos for my lunch. I had it peacefully and reached the gate. Surprisingly, the gate was completely deserted by that time. There had been a pre-boarding of the flight. There was still about 1 hr for the flight's departure though. I was not at all late to the gate by any chance, I told myself. I boarded the flight and got my seat. The videos on my iPOd kept me busy for the next 2.5 hrs.
My next station was JFK. Soon after landing I realized that my next flight (the Emirates flight!) was on a different terminal.This meant a whole set of new security check!. I took the shuttle and reached the new terminal. As soon as I was near to entry point of the A-series gate to catch my next flight bound to Dubai, I could see only people from India or from Indian origin in the vicinity of atleast 100-200 yards. The atmosphere there was like in a Mumbai airport. I prepared myself for the next security check. I once again took the pain of removing all the accessories I was wearing reassembling it. I did not had to walk much after that as I was right in front of my A2 gate. I was eagerly waiting to get inside of the emirates flight. Everybody who had been on Emirates before had only good things to say about them. You know what they had in their mind ;) I had a lot of time to cover before the boarding. I had to do something. I thought of calling all the pals whom I had forgotten to say good bye :) I accumulated enough quarters from a near by kiosk. I made a few calls and very soon had ran out of quarters. I went again and bought a few more quarters. This time that lady was bit reluctant though. Soon enough the announcement was made for boarding. I finished my final call and returned to the boarding queue.
Boarding people inside Boeing 787 bus Which seemed a daunting task, was never to those guys. It was with full ease and patience they boarded everybody one by one. The ambiance inside the aircraft was very elegant and pleasing completely looked Middle eastern. The air hostesses were in a half Arab and half Western dress code. I made my way to my seat. Not surprisingly enough every seat had personal monitors. The speciality - these were the ones with touch screen!. Though I was half asleep by that time, I started playing around with this fancy panel. I had seen that personal monitors with that complex remote control (that should be pulled from beneath that arm rest). Touch screen was much better. It had a channel which would let you see the flight landing and take off through the live flight cameras!. I tested it, that never worked but the idea was good!. I continued my research further. The second noticeable feature - it had ability to send message to any other passenger sitting seated in the aircraft. That was innovative. The same thing reflected even in games section. The difference - it had the capability to let the passenger play a chess game or snooker or a trivia game not just only with the computer but with the other passengers seated elsewhere.
"Sir, Would you like to have something to drink?" a sexy stewardess interrupted.
"Can I have some white wine... please!!?".
She smiled and gave me a glass and can of Chardonnay white wine :).
So far so goood. I was beginning to like the Emirates flight. The next 11 hrs of my journey - I spent half in sleeping, half browsing and restlessly watching some movies. The 12 and half hour journey seemed to be much longer than it was. But the Sun seemed like doing is daily routines in a hurry as I kept track of him over the horizon. Within those 12 hours there had been a sunset, a sunrise and an other near sunset as I my flight was preparing for landing.
After reaching Dubai, a shuttle bus carried us all the way to the entry of the terminal which was followed by a severe security check. I did not had too much of transit time in Dubai and I had to rush to the gate. Shortly after 30 minutes the boarding onto the Bangalore bound flight had begun. So far so good. I had all admires for the emirates air. Until then all my flights were completely on time. My last and final flight was scheduled to leave at about 11 P.M. local
time and the clock showed 10:14 P.M. I had occupied my seat. I only remembered finding my seat and buckling myself with the seat belt. Very soon, I was in deep deep sleep.
"Did you know that this flight is not going now!!!!!??"
The guy seated next to me woke me up and said.At first I thought it was one of those pranks which we used to make during our college days when we used to travel in bus.
"Is it!!?" "Is there any problem!!??"
"Looks like there some technical problem and they have called for de-boarding!!"
"Oh Shit!!", "Not at this time!!".
I reached for all my hand baggage and moved towards the exit of the aircraft.Yet again, there was a shuttle bus waiting for to take us to the gates.I heard a kannada group in the shuttle expressing their anger on the emirates air and remembering how good was their Air Deccan flight.Not too very surprisingly, the bus carried us back to the entry point of the terminal where we had come from initially. So, again one complete round of painful severe security scan!.There was one Emirates representative standing and guiding particularly the de-boarded passengers from EK518 emirates flight.
"Hopefully, this is the last time???!!!!" I told her.
"I'm sorry Sir, this is the standard airport procedure!!!".
The replacement flight was scheduled to depart at 2 A.M. I did some surfing through my laptop as I waited for the boarding. Finally finally, the new carrier came and with a new set of Crew.My sleep had completely gone by that time. I had all praising for the Emirates air until I landed in Dubai, but within a span of 4-5 hrs I was fed up with
them. I spent my time of the rest of my journey to Bangalore watching this and that on the TV.
Close to 7 A.M it was when I landed at Bangalore. The final and biggest hurdle - Getting away from customs. I wrote "NIL" on that dutiable goods section on
the Immigration form. I dumped all three hand baggage of mine into the stroller of the x-ray scanner. Luckily enough, the guy ahead of me also had some three odd bags. The officer spot that and got busy dealing with him. The other aunty officer was half
asleep. It was the signal for me to pack my bags and escape from there.Next! - the baggage claim. It was a small belt and there were more maroon coloured uniformed guys than the passengers. Everybody wanted to help!.When the perimeter of the baggage claim belt got crowded with the uniformed and non-uniformed guys along with their carts, two guys mean time were busy marking the "cross" marks on the big and the heavier bags. Bigger bag meant something for the customs to watch out for. They were throwing bags like bricks on to the belt. As this went on for about next 15-20 minutes, the bags got juxtaposed horizontally and one over the other, while a few started to pop off of the belt. It was at this time when the belt suddenly showed no motion, when the lever still happened to make a prolonged creaky sound. This was followed by fumes coming from beneath the belt. The smell of rubber was all over place. That was the least thing that was expected!. There were still a lot of passenger waiting for the bags. This was followed by lots of unnecessary shouting, anger, frustration as people started to climb and walk over the belt. I had almost lost hopes of finding my bags in that mess. It was then a blue coloured bag came out of the slider. So it was one down, one to go. It was almost close to
8:15 A.M when I was myself pretty sure that my other bag was missing.
"This is all we have got!!" An official too confirmed.
There were plenty of people like me wondering about their bags. I waited for my turn in the queue to fill up the form for my missing bag. I still had to cross the customs. I had enough items loaded in my bags that I had to catch an average custom's officer's eye. I walked out of the airport with great courage as there were lots of eyes falling on my cart. It was like walking past the green channel just like a smuggler.
Once I came out of the airport there was a sense of accomplishment, a feeling of having found a treasure in the legendary El Dorado city.
I met my bros and my Dad and sat inside the car. We were supposedly heading towards Mysore. The driver interrupted and said,
"Saaar, Mysoorige ivattu hoda hangeney road poorti block aagidey!" (Sir, It will be a miracle if we reach Mysore today. The road has been blocked!).
"Dude tu ham sabko chodke jaa rahe ho" an another friend said.
It was those final moments on the day of my travel back to my home. I finally gave one hard long look at the house. Two of my friends together had to escort the toughest 65+ lb duffel to the car. I helped myself with the rest. Soon we were heading on the I-494 west towards the Lindberg terminal of the St.Paul/Minneapolis Airport. For the past year and a half I had been on this highway on innumerable occasions. It was the oesophagus for us to the outside world.
I had perfectly worked on the weight and balance of my cargo for the past two days. The duffel was showing 69.5 lbs while the other 29" upright showed 51 lbs. The check-in lady said,
"Alrighty, 51 lbs is okey, you got to pay a 25$ fee for the excess baggage for the other".
"That's fine".
It was delightful to see of my first hurdle getting cleared so easily. The bags were through checked in until Bangalore and there I was holding 4 boarding passes.
Afterwards, it was the Starbucks time. I had a lot of time until my first boarding and we (Deepak and Pradeep as well) thought of having something at the Starbucks. I had my final slurp of the Starbucks Cappuciono as I bid my final good bye to them and entered that security check. The officer at the entry of the security check point said,
"Sir, I'm gonna hold your boarding pass for now, you have been selected for a special security check. Go ahead and get it done and come back for your boarding pass!!!!".
He told that the higher level of security check was because my boarding pass to Atlanta had the special characters "SSS3" on the right most corner.
"What the hell!!!?"
Trust me, this is a sick check. I was double cross checked for any armed weapon despite the x-ray machine made no sound!. Every single item was opened from my hand bag and was certified!. I guess I gave that lady a tough job!. Remember, I had almost 20 kgs of gadgets in my hand bag!. Anyways, that manual check was very annoying. The aunty searched my bag thread by thread as though she was sure about the traces of opium or marijuana. She tried her lever best though. The closest one she could find was my sten gun like Canon 100-400mm IS USM lens :)
I was finally allowed to proceed.
I reached the Gate to find out the boarding was 40 minutes afterwards. I plugged in my iPod on to my ears. The boarding was on time. The journey was little haunting. As I flew past from Minneapolis to Atlanta, the memoirs of my good, bad and boring times of my stay at Eagan also flew past my mind.
The flight reached Atlanta in time but by that time I was very hungry. I grabbed some ghaas pooos for my lunch. I had it peacefully and reached the gate. Surprisingly, the gate was completely deserted by that time. There had been a pre-boarding of the flight. There was still about 1 hr for the flight's departure though. I was not at all late to the gate by any chance, I told myself. I boarded the flight and got my seat. The videos on my iPOd kept me busy for the next 2.5 hrs.
My next station was JFK. Soon after landing I realized that my next flight (the Emirates flight!) was on a different terminal.This meant a whole set of new security check!. I took the shuttle and reached the new terminal. As soon as I was near to entry point of the A-series gate to catch my next flight bound to Dubai, I could see only people from India or from Indian origin in the vicinity of atleast 100-200 yards. The atmosphere there was like in a Mumbai airport. I prepared myself for the next security check. I once again took the pain of removing all the accessories I was wearing reassembling it. I did not had to walk much after that as I was right in front of my A2 gate. I was eagerly waiting to get inside of the emirates flight. Everybody who had been on Emirates before had only good things to say about them. You know what they had in their mind ;) I had a lot of time to cover before the boarding. I had to do something. I thought of calling all the pals whom I had forgotten to say good bye :) I accumulated enough quarters from a near by kiosk. I made a few calls and very soon had ran out of quarters. I went again and bought a few more quarters. This time that lady was bit reluctant though. Soon enough the announcement was made for boarding. I finished my final call and returned to the boarding queue.
Boarding people inside Boeing 787 bus Which seemed a daunting task, was never to those guys. It was with full ease and patience they boarded everybody one by one. The ambiance inside the aircraft was very elegant and pleasing completely looked Middle eastern. The air hostesses were in a half Arab and half Western dress code. I made my way to my seat. Not surprisingly enough every seat had personal monitors. The speciality - these were the ones with touch screen!. Though I was half asleep by that time, I started playing around with this fancy panel. I had seen that personal monitors with that complex remote control (that should be pulled from beneath that arm rest). Touch screen was much better. It had a channel which would let you see the flight landing and take off through the live flight cameras!. I tested it, that never worked but the idea was good!. I continued my research further. The second noticeable feature - it had ability to send message to any other passenger sitting seated in the aircraft. That was innovative. The same thing reflected even in games section. The difference - it had the capability to let the passenger play a chess game or snooker or a trivia game not just only with the computer but with the other passengers seated elsewhere.
"Sir, Would you like to have something to drink?" a sexy stewardess interrupted.
"Can I have some white wine... please!!?".
She smiled and gave me a glass and can of Chardonnay white wine :).
So far so goood. I was beginning to like the Emirates flight. The next 11 hrs of my journey - I spent half in sleeping, half browsing and restlessly watching some movies. The 12 and half hour journey seemed to be much longer than it was. But the Sun seemed like doing is daily routines in a hurry as I kept track of him over the horizon. Within those 12 hours there had been a sunset, a sunrise and an other near sunset as I my flight was preparing for landing.
After reaching Dubai, a shuttle bus carried us all the way to the entry of the terminal which was followed by a severe security check. I did not had too much of transit time in Dubai and I had to rush to the gate. Shortly after 30 minutes the boarding onto the Bangalore bound flight had begun. So far so good. I had all admires for the emirates air. Until then all my flights were completely on time. My last and final flight was scheduled to leave at about 11 P.M. local
time and the clock showed 10:14 P.M. I had occupied my seat. I only remembered finding my seat and buckling myself with the seat belt. Very soon, I was in deep deep sleep.
"Did you know that this flight is not going now!!!!!??"
The guy seated next to me woke me up and said.At first I thought it was one of those pranks which we used to make during our college days when we used to travel in bus.
"Is it!!?" "Is there any problem!!??"
"Looks like there some technical problem and they have called for de-boarding!!"
"Oh Shit!!", "Not at this time!!".
I reached for all my hand baggage and moved towards the exit of the aircraft.Yet again, there was a shuttle bus waiting for to take us to the gates.I heard a kannada group in the shuttle expressing their anger on the emirates air and remembering how good was their Air Deccan flight.Not too very surprisingly, the bus carried us back to the entry point of the terminal where we had come from initially. So, again one complete round of painful severe security scan!.There was one Emirates representative standing and guiding particularly the de-boarded passengers from EK518 emirates flight.
"Hopefully, this is the last time???!!!!" I told her.
"I'm sorry Sir, this is the standard airport procedure!!!".
The replacement flight was scheduled to depart at 2 A.M. I did some surfing through my laptop as I waited for the boarding. Finally finally, the new carrier came and with a new set of Crew.My sleep had completely gone by that time. I had all praising for the Emirates air until I landed in Dubai, but within a span of 4-5 hrs I was fed up with
them. I spent my time of the rest of my journey to Bangalore watching this and that on the TV.
Close to 7 A.M it was when I landed at Bangalore. The final and biggest hurdle - Getting away from customs. I wrote "NIL" on that dutiable goods section on
the Immigration form. I dumped all three hand baggage of mine into the stroller of the x-ray scanner. Luckily enough, the guy ahead of me also had some three odd bags. The officer spot that and got busy dealing with him. The other aunty officer was half
asleep. It was the signal for me to pack my bags and escape from there.Next! - the baggage claim. It was a small belt and there were more maroon coloured uniformed guys than the passengers. Everybody wanted to help!.When the perimeter of the baggage claim belt got crowded with the uniformed and non-uniformed guys along with their carts, two guys mean time were busy marking the "cross" marks on the big and the heavier bags. Bigger bag meant something for the customs to watch out for. They were throwing bags like bricks on to the belt. As this went on for about next 15-20 minutes, the bags got juxtaposed horizontally and one over the other, while a few started to pop off of the belt. It was at this time when the belt suddenly showed no motion, when the lever still happened to make a prolonged creaky sound. This was followed by fumes coming from beneath the belt. The smell of rubber was all over place. That was the least thing that was expected!. There were still a lot of passenger waiting for the bags. This was followed by lots of unnecessary shouting, anger, frustration as people started to climb and walk over the belt. I had almost lost hopes of finding my bags in that mess. It was then a blue coloured bag came out of the slider. So it was one down, one to go. It was almost close to
8:15 A.M when I was myself pretty sure that my other bag was missing.
"This is all we have got!!" An official too confirmed.
There were plenty of people like me wondering about their bags. I waited for my turn in the queue to fill up the form for my missing bag. I still had to cross the customs. I had enough items loaded in my bags that I had to catch an average custom's officer's eye. I walked out of the airport with great courage as there were lots of eyes falling on my cart. It was like walking past the green channel just like a smuggler.
Once I came out of the airport there was a sense of accomplishment, a feeling of having found a treasure in the legendary El Dorado city.
I met my bros and my Dad and sat inside the car. We were supposedly heading towards Mysore. The driver interrupted and said,
"Saaar, Mysoorige ivattu hoda hangeney road poorti block aagidey!" (Sir, It will be a miracle if we reach Mysore today. The road has been blocked!).
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